Definitely agree that this is not just a psychology issue[^1]. I'm not quite as optimistic about the implications, however. The way academia operates is very t

Definitely agree that this is not just a psychology issue[^1]. I'm not quite as optimistic about the implications, however. The way academia operates is very trust heavy. This makes sense, no lab can be experts in all fields of study, and perform every experiment themselves. If something doesn't work for you, the default assumption is that something in your system is incompatible with the previous work, or you're just doing something wrong. So sometimes it takes quite a concerted effort to identify bad science, because legitimate work can be nudged towards supporting + compatible with this bad science. You basically have no choice but to have basis in what is widely believed to be true if you want grant funding or papers published. From a purely theoretical/knowledge standpoint, I think I agree - the truth will eventually be accepted. But in fields like biology, this can be at the cost of drugs not working, actually promising avenues not explored, wasted resources - tangible harms. [^1]: E.g. the recent Alzheimer's controversy, Stanford's president scandal, 5-HTTLPR, etc. Ironically, Ronald Fisher argues that Gregor Mendel's work, the foundation of modern biology, to be essentially fraudulent despite being correct.